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Author: Subject: Taupo Track Day
Furyous

posted on 31/3/17 at 08:41 AM Reply With Quote
Taupo Track Day

After four years of working on the Fury to get it road legal over here in New Zealand... I'm not quite there yet. But last weekend I went to Taupo to join in the Fraser annual meeting at the track. I've been each year as a spectator since 2013 and each year I told the guys "Maybe next year".

Getting there was a bit of a mission. I was still doing work on the car on Thursday evening before towing it down to Auckland that night. After packing our bags and dusting off the Fury, we finally got to loading the trailer at about 10 pm. Unfortunately, there was just enough petrol in the tank to get halfway up the ramps before the engine cut out. A trip into town to fill the petrol can and get some coffee meant we were finally loaded and ready to leave at midnight. We didn't get into Auckland until 2.30 am, where we stayed at my dad's place for the rest of the night. Then we were up at 6 am to get to a service station in South Auckland to meet some of the Fraser guys. They were doing a scenic tour in their Frasers and I didn't fancy trying to keep up with my hoary old trailer, so we set off to make our own way down.

The four hour drive down to Taupo from Auckland was pretty uneventful apart from lots of people looking, talking at petrol stations, and a random Seven beeping at me as they passed. Turned out they were going to Taupo as well and we had a good chat later on.

The track day started at 8 am on Saturday. Once everyone had unpacked and gone through scrutineering we got to the parade lap where we all went round at about 30 mph to get an idea of the track and to see where the flag points were.




During this lap the Fury's engine was popping and farting fiercely. It only seemed to be from low throttle under 2,000 rpm so I thought it might have been better once I really got going. We went back to the pits and I waited for my group. The day was split into five groups of about 10 cars, and we should have had five sessions each.

My first session didn't go well. Pulling off the line, I was alongside a Mustang GT500. I was definitely down on power from what I was expecting and they got away from me pretty quickly. The Fury looks tiny next to that lardy American!




I started giving it some on the second lap aaaand... spun out. Looking at the video it seemed to just swap ends on a corner. A little later on the same lap I started oversteering, overcorrected, and spun into the gravel. That meant they had to stop the session and hold everyone at the start line while I was towed out. Embarrassing! It was right before the pit entry so I pulled out for that session. I was blaming driver error (which it was) but then it clicked that I had four brand new tyres on the car and hadn't given them time to scrub off in my over-eagerness to have some fun.

At this point I plugged my phone into the ECU to try to see what was going on with the engine. A big thanks to whoever is was on here that wrote MSDroid! It turned out the ignition had an offset of -12°. So when it's mapped to run 12.5° advance at idle, it was actually running at 0.5°! I set the offset to 0° and the engine immediately sounded better. It was quieter at idle and revved up very smoothly. I don't know how that happened because it was running great the weekend before at home.



I went out for the second session and had a great time. The engine was running great and the tyres definitely had more grip. I could feel the car squirming on some corners but a little flick of the wheel saved it. It just felt so controllable. My track time app on my phone didn't record the session but I saw a best time of 1:29. A reasonable time would be under about 1:23, but it's my first track day and I'm not familiar with the car!

This is probably my favourite photo of the day. My finacee's non-photographer uncle took the photos but some turned out pretty nice.




I was really getting into it on the third session. Despite being a very crappy driver (missing turn-in points, braking early and gently, not taking the right line through corners) I was getting fairly consistent lap times within 0.5 seconds of each other. Unfortunately, on the sixth lap the engine started knocking badly. I eased off and pulled into the pits where I decided to call it a day. A bit of a shame, but at least I got a few good laps in after all this time!





Things I learned from the day:



  • I'm not Ayrton Senna!
  • The Fury's suspension needs setting up. It's definitely leaning to the back-right.
  • The roll bar looks bloody useless.
  • The Fury is lower than other Sevens! Apparently they could see the top of the other cars over the back wall but didn't see me coming until the last few corners. Side-by-side photos make the Fury look a few inches shorter.
  • Whoever cut the holes for the front indicators must have been cross-eyed. Not something I noticed until I was looking at the photos.



Hopefully next year I'll have the car certified so I can drive it down.

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Patten

posted on 31/3/17 at 09:21 AM Reply With Quote
Lovely looking Fury.

I too need to get my suspension setup done

Chris

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Shooter63

posted on 31/3/17 at 07:50 PM Reply With Quote
I've got a stylus which is similar to the Fury, the normal suspension set up for it is
20mm rake on the chassis measured from the front forward cross rail bottom at the front, to the point where the floor goes from alloy to steel ( normally under your bum) at the rear, obviously rear higher than front
Front camber negative 1, 1.5 degree
Toe straight to slightly in
Yours looks like it rides higher at the front than rear with you in it ( not saying you're a blotta or anything )
Try what I said, when I changed mine it transformed the car, go higher at the rear if you like oversteer, less if you like a more balanced set up.

Shooter

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HowardB

posted on 31/3/17 at 08:01 PM Reply With Quote
that looks fun, not had mine on a track yet, but l like the look of yours. I fitted indicators inside the leMans headlights, but I am going to remove those when I fit the LED headlights with DLR/indicators. Should make it a little more tidy.

Yes I think the roll bar was designed to fit under the soft-top not above the helmet - not ideal

Good luck with getting it reg'd in NZ





Howard

Fisher Fury was 2000 Zetec - now a 1600 (it Lives again and goes zoom)

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